Bitcoin 'rarely' used for legal transactions, on 'road to irrelevance', say European Central Bank
Source: Tech Crunch
The value of bitcoin recently finding stability at around $20,000 was an artificially induced last gasp before the road to irrelevance and this was already foreseeable before FTX went bust and sent the bitcoin price to well down below $16,000, wrote Ulrich Bindseil and Jürgen Schaaf on ECBs blog.
The central bankers argue that bitcoins conceptual design and technological shortcomings make it questionable as a means of payment. Real bitcoin transactions are cumbersome, slow and expensive. Bitcoin has never been used to any significant extent for legal real-world transactions, they wrote.
Bitcoin also does not generate cash flow (like real estate) or dividends (like equities), cannot be used productively (like commodities) or provide social benefits (like gold). The market valuation of bitcoin is therefore based purely on speculation, they wrote.
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/30/bitcoin-rarely-used-for-legal-transactions-on-road-to-irrelevance-say-european-central-bank-officials/
elleng
(131,129 posts)ffr
(22,672 posts)What ever will Putin's mob do without this lucrative revenue stream?
Crash, mo-fo! CRASH!
jmowreader
(50,562 posts)...for buying illegal guns, illegal drugs, contract killings and all sorts of things like that.
Roy Rolling
(6,936 posts)Ransomware and DDoS attacks always asked for Bitcoin. Which kinda irritated the bank even further, they demanded payment (they never got) in a currency not recognized by legitimate financial institutions.
Told them politely f*ck you because, you know, I worked in a bank.
NSFW
maxsolomon
(33,400 posts)like jewelry?
edhopper
(33,619 posts)Uses of Gold
It's enlightening.
CountAllVotes
(20,878 posts)You can never have enough of it, never!
groundloop
(11,523 posts)CountAllVotes
(20,878 posts)I gold crowns!
reACTIONary
(5,781 posts)LudwigPastorius
(9,177 posts)It went up 4.6% today.
Justice matters.
(6,941 posts)oldsoftie
(12,609 posts)Justice matters.
(6,941 posts)Looks like the crooks didn't care about their gullible victims potential suffering.
No retirement for you. It's their fault after all.
Escurumbele
(3,403 posts)and a few minutes later went down to $59,000.00, then it went up again, but not sure it ever reached that high of $64.
A friend of mine wanted to invest in BITCOIN, I told him to wait, to not make an irrational decision, I started looking at it and saw how volatile it was, I recommended him to find something else to put his money on, I am hoping he followed my advise, I never spoke to him about BITCOIN again, I kind of forgot about it.
I have always had this bad feeling about cryptocurrency.
Response to brooklynite (Original post)
Baked Potato This message was self-deleted by its author.
moonshinegnomie
(2,489 posts)they are a direct threat to them.
I look at crypto the same way I do gold. better to have a SMALL amount just in case than not have it if you need it.
Disclosure: I have a small amount of both bitcoin and etherium.
ColinC
(8,332 posts)Crypto's value is literally just based on whether a ton of people are buying and selling. Makes it a great asset to gamble on (and I have made myself a quick buck or two from it), but I don't see it as much more than that.
moonshinegnomie
(2,489 posts)they have value because people say they do.
ColinC
(8,332 posts)If that were the case it wouldnt drop 90% of its value on a dime and have no impact on the overall economy.
Lucky Luciano
(11,260 posts)No need to find solutions in search of a problem.
In retrospect, the currency backed by memes was bound to be less stable than the one backed by aircraft carriers.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,366 posts)and sometimes other important transactions have to, by law, be in a certain currency. They have value because countries say they do. That gives them stability that a rapidly-evolving maelstrom of cryptocurrencies, and individuals trying to make a quick buck (and they want to get their money out into bucks to make it stable), are not going to achieve.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)The earlier you get in, the more valuable your coin becomes. So it's important to get more people to buy into it. Ideally, get corporate decision makers to buy in so they decide to "help" the public use it at a huge scale to keep the system growing. They were so close to accomplishing that last step.
But the longer the system is up, the more distributed electric power it takes to keep the system running and expanding.
At some point the total cost is greater than the total value; this should be predictable.
But it's such an easy sell, too, because of the promise of easy riches.
So get in early - ideally at the start of a new coin. Understand or better still, understand and control the minute details of how it works so you can calculate the point of diminished returns, and get out before it crashes.
Oh, and maybe invest in electricity producers or the fuels they use, too.
Hey - I wonder what's going to happen to those towns in Texas where the civic leaders secretly signed agreements so crypto miners could build facilities next to the towns' power generation plants because the mining uses more power than the town itself?
Also, the era of being able to use graphics cards on many coins ended and only specially built chips & computers remained viable. Expensive ones, but miners were willing to pay. Maybe once crypto crashes chip fabs and computer plants can get back to making stuff for the rest of us.
And finally, what happens to NFTs (non fungible tokens) based on the blockchains of crypto coins that crash?
ToxMarz
(2,169 posts)The possible threat scenarios are mind numbing. It's only spin, hype and MASSIVE marketing $$$ that props it up that diminishes them. It's not unregulated, the crooks are pretty much in control regulating it to their advantage.
brooklynite
(94,738 posts)Whether or not its a good investment, what "need" for it can you imagine?
ColinC
(8,332 posts)And it will likely stay that way.
Justice matters.
(6,941 posts)Ransom takers doing all kinds of disruption, costing billions and potentially costing good-paying real jobs.
But it is what it is, I guess. Let the easy-to-defraud gullibles suffer the consequences. Let's get rich fast.
ColinC
(8,332 posts)Like any casino or gambling operation.
SouthernDem4ever
(6,617 posts)It won't stop elite control of advantage to a few, but at least it will be more transparent.
burrowowl
(17,648 posts)banks, Wall Street, etc. all legalized their from the little guy by the fat cats.
Justice matters.
(6,941 posts)That pocket-change money came from gullible victims, right? Who cares? It's their fault.
LetMyPeopleVote
(145,567 posts)Crypto never made sense to me and I am not surprised that this scam is falling apart
oldsoftie
(12,609 posts)Orrex
(63,224 posts)What gentle times those were.
Old saying, too good to be true
cstanleytech
(26,319 posts)Just like metals such as gold or silver have value only because most people perceive that it does.
ColinC
(8,332 posts)cstanleytech
(26,319 posts)in the past and then fallen because people stopped perceiving that they had value.
Take the US dollar, it is used in many countries because people percieve it to have value but eventually they will lose that perception and its "value" will evaporate.
ColinC
(8,332 posts)Crypto is neither steady nor reliable
cstanleytech
(26,319 posts)lose its perceived value as its essentially paper with green ink.
Also I never said crypto was steady or reliable but it is a perfect example of what happens when people perceiving that something (in this case bitcoin) had value begin to lose that perception.
SalamanderSleeps
(591 posts)It's all zeros.
The ECB and the rest of the world banking system is so incestuous that it is the reason why bitcoin is actually valid in the first place.
A lie agreed upon is still a lie.
We are in for a serious crash because the 1% have created too much dead money.
Yavin4
(35,446 posts)and crypto, NFTs, and all other speculations go poof.
Earth-shine
(4,044 posts)LetMyPeopleVote
(145,567 posts)SouthernDem4ever
(6,617 posts)They guy that said things were good before the real estate bubble burst in 2008. After that, I only like watching the segment of him with fart noises on John Oliver's show.
William Seger
(10,779 posts)It's nothing BUT a confidence game played by speculators, with no practical use except for illegal transactions.
riaria1100
(13 posts)once this crypto reach high, then it will go to " 'road to relevance "
William Seger
(10,779 posts)After a career in software development, the reason I've never "invested" in cryptocurrencies (a.k.a. gambling) is because I expect that sooner or later, someone will find and exploit a flaw in the design, and their value will drop to zero overnight. At least Beanie Babies are cute, and you can still cuddle them after they lost value to speculators.
cab67
(3,008 posts)She kept insisting that we hold onto them, because they were going to be worth something.
Then, a few years later, she visited and looked with horror at the Beanie Babies she'd given me. I'd taken them out of their packaging.
"But that will ruin their value!" she said.
"But my friends' children can't play with them in their packaging," I replied. She saw an investment; I saw toys. Toys that I later gave to my own daughter.
My mother passed away before my daughter entered the world, but I think she'd be smiling if she saw my now-6-year-old playing with her small stuffies. Seeing a child take joy from a plaything, and make whole imaginary worlds with it, is worth way more than an overpriced stuffed animal in its original packaging.
honest.abe
(8,685 posts)Its legal but dumb.
womanofthehills
(8,773 posts)I'm going to put some work on Open Sea just to play around. I just have a small amt of bitcoin and ETH just to learn about them. The amt I have keeps going up and down.
brush
(53,871 posts)Big drops in value are always around the corner. Invest only what you can afford to lose...just like in Vegas. If you have a high risk threshold, get in on a drop, make a quick profit and get out. Rinse an repeat if you have really high risk threshold.
It take research to know the low lows and patience to not jump in all at once as what you think is the low may not be. Proceed incrementally as the uptick will happen. Figure how long you want to stay in as the price rises. Make your profit and get out.
It's the same with day trading or low cost, self trading brokerages, but at least with them the drops aren't so extreme and you know it will usually come back. Not always the case with crypto, as we've just seen with FTX, and other earlier drops, or just outright thefts.
iemanja
(53,072 posts)for a poker deposit. I bought it and transferred it immediately.
Oneironaut
(5,524 posts)The rise of annoying crypto bros and celebrity endorsements probably sucked a bunch of clueless people into investing into when they never should have.